PrivacyGuard Review

PrivacyGuard is an identity protection service that includes credit monitoring. A membership costs $19.99 a month. This cost is about average, though TransUnion and Credit Karma are both more affordable options.

PrivacyGuard is an identity protection service that includes credit monitoring. A membership costs $19.99 a month. This cost is about average, though TransUnion and Credit Karma are both more affordable options. You can sign up for a $1 14-day trial, but if you don’t cancel you’ll get billed for the service.

The credit monitoring features include monthly reports from Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. If you go sign up for credit reporting, more frequent access to your reports is best. This gives you the opportunity to spot errors and discrepancies and dispute them quickly.

You’ll also be able to see your three bureau scores. PrivacyGuard uses the CreditXpert scoring model. This is an educational score, sometimes called a FAKO score, which can provide a general sense of your overall credit health, but the actual scores used by lenders are different.

One drawback of using PrivacyGuard is the lack of a free credit score option. The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you to get a free report once a year, but we also like services that give you free access to your credit score. Currently, PrivacyGuard does not offer a mobile app, though one is being developed.

If you spot an error or discrepancy on your credit report, you can send in a dispute directly through the PrivacyGuard dashboard. This is a useful feature we valued highly when we looked at these credit reporting services. Because each credit report includes different data, being able to spot errors and send disputes directly to each of the three bureaus is incredibly helpful.

PrivacyGuard will also send you alerts through text or email. You’ll be sent notifications about new credit additions to your file, which is a helpful way of spotting potential fraud.

This is primarily an identity theft monitoring service, and its offerings in this area are very good. It provides help replacing lost or stolen cards, monitors a wide range of personal information by tracking public records databases, and offers assistance with resolving any issues related to identity theft. However, it doesn’t have any identity protection for children.

PrivacyGuard has some strong identity theft monitoring features. You’ll also get three-bureau credit reports monthly. It uses an educational scoring model that isn’t as accurate as other scoring models. There’s also no mobile app.